WPost Page A4: Questions Linger About McCain's Prognosis After Skin Cancer

[RamboLiberal]

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One loosely organized group of physicians has been claiming in Web-based videos, op-ed columns and newspaper ads that McCain's risk of dying from a recurrence of the skin cancer he had treated eight years ago may be as high as 60 percent.

However, data on cancer survival rates compiled by the federal government suggest that people in McCain's situation have no more than a 10 percent chance of dying from melanoma over the next decade.

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The gist of the critique is that McCain's cancer was more advanced than his physicians concluded and that the chance of recurrence is consequently higher. Melanoma that spreads widely through the body -- "metastasizes," in medical parlance -- is rapidly fatal.

The effort to learn more about McCain's health gained steam after he chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. More than 2,700 physicians signed a full-page ad in the New York Times on Oct. 3 calling for a "full, public release" of the candidate's medical records. Others urged that microscopic slides of tissue removed before and during his operation be made available for review by independent pathologists.

"Voters need to know who is most likely to be running the country in 2010 if Senator McCain is elected in 2008," Wendy Epstein, a New York dermatologist and Obama supporter, wrote in an eight-page analysis of the senator's risk circulating on the Internet.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/17/AR2008101702825.html?hpid=topnews

[Berry Cool]

1. I think getting all hung up on the melanoma is wrong.

If you read the details in this article that were carefully excised above, they indicate that McCain doesn't have all that high a chance of recurrence. To imply that he does is to exhibit untoward prejudice toward cancer survivors.

If you survived melanoma like he did, would you want employers afraid to hire you, believing you might be at death's door?

No, the issue with McCain and his likelihood of death the next four years can be made with his age alone. You don't need the cancer. Besides which, there are a million and one other reasons not to vote for him.